Minox not dead yet.

with so many posts suggesting Minox 8x11 being dead, I thought I would mention that yesterday in a discussion

with Blue Moon photo regarding me trying their Minox developing/printing for C41 films I was told that they ran at

least one roll of Minox film everyday... that made me happy, especially since I know most people are doing their own.

Ah yes, more evidence. I spoke to Carsten Chadt at Lab811.com in May at his house in Germany. He told me he does about 90 rolls of film per month. This coupled with the fact that so many do their own leads me to believe that Minox still eeks out an existance. The German Minox club is very active in keeping it alive if only in Germany. If anyone is looking for a replacement for Mino Pro 100, Lab811.com has some special stocks available that will surpass this type. Film will never die but it will fade from the normal consumer realm.

Hello Robert, I am in France and I want to buy some films 8 X 11 for a Minox B, in Black and White.

Do you have a good adress, where I can find them?

kind regards

Dear G�rd, Have a look at www.8x11film.com or www.fotoimpex.de. You will find several brands of film.

Hello Gerard. I agree with Mr. Slotboom; fotoimpex.de out of Berlin is a good source of B&W. They have a couple of types. I have not bought Minox film while in France other than factory color when found by chance. I have a couple of expired rolls of 25 ASA laying around, if you want them I can send them to you at the end of the next week when I am actually in France. Pau to be precise. It is rare for me to shoot B&W though I used to only shoot that in the early days, for me anyway. Bon Chance!

The problem is finding enough labs to do a good job of Minox, especially black and white. I can get film easily enough (http://www.mshobbies.com) in the UK, but I think the labs in Germany are having problems with their equipment - no contact sheets for example for color.

 

Although you can develop Minox C41 film through commercial processes no problem, typical lab machines (D-LAB, Frontier) never had an 8x11 carrier nor a mechanism for automatic scanning and processing prints. The carrier is half the problem, as the machine pre-scans all film: with no sprockets in the 8x11 film (even 110 had that, which is why there are some labs still offering 110 processing (UK: http://www.cityphotographic.co.uk)) the manual positioning features of many minlab rely on some way of gripping the film rebate to position the film in that manner.

 

Scanning is a grey area, especiallty for Minox. None of the holders support 8x11 officially and I have seen results where the negative is not sharp when scanned (because the holder cannot keep the film flat)

Tried: plustek - high res, but impossible to keep film flat and minolta scan-muli Mk I with customized minox holder. Very good results, but not quite high enough resolution for 8x11. But note, the Mk.I Minolta scanner came with a 16mm minolta holder, so I can do 16mm scanning easily. Results are very good indeed.

Regarding scanning... here was my prototype:

 

http://www.geocities.com/markhahn2000/minox_coolscanV/minox_coolscanV.html

 

Works fine. I've since made an identical one from aluminum and added guides.

 

maybe will help someone.

You can use about any scanner that will scan film, both flatbed and dedicated, if you first mount a cut frame in a GEPE style non-permanent 2x2 mount. With glass the film is held quite flat and you can use mounting fluid to boot. After the scan open the mount, change frame and do another.

How do you get on with the glass Gepe slide reflecting when scanning? I have not got around to scanning Minox slides using the special 30x30 to 50x50 adapter. Most of my Minox slides are the glass version. I could change to the later style but single Minox negatives are fiddly to handle. I moved my 10x14 and 12x17 slides to 110 frames which are easy to scan.

 

I have thought about using the Gepe slides for negative scanning, but I do not want to cut up the hundreds of strips of negatives now in wallets and the slide carrier I have will not accept a negative strip sticking out beyond the 50x50 mm slide.I could modify it, but then it might stop it's use for 35mm slides.